By Rebecca Wood | Project Leader
On 5 July 2021, AdvocAid staff took a week of Radical Rest. During this break, our team took leave from all work activities. Our Radical Rest aimed solely at providing time for our staff to focus on themselves. It was a time for our staff to rest and recharge.
In March 2020, Sierra Leone recorded it’s first Covid-19 case. Since then we have worked throughout the pandemic to ensure access to justice to women and girls in Sierra Leone.We created new, innovative ways to ensure access and to continue providing legal, welfare and psychosocial support for clients in detention. Our staff worked incredibly hard to address the needs of marginalised women and girls during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Our work is enormously rewarding but it can be challenging for our staff. Responding to Covid-19 and the injustice, violence and pain experienced by the women and girls we work with requires emotional strength and resilience from our staff. The nature and importance of AdvocAid’s can also make it hard to take leave and make time for self-care.
Our staff are the heart of AdvocAid. Our first ever week of Radical Rest is one way we are delivering on our commitment, set within our 5-year strategy ‘Uman Get Rayt’, to empower our people and ensure every member of our team feels valued and recognised. In line with our feminist values, we focused on creating a collective space for staff to focus on themselves, to recharge and heal from all the ways that we are affected by our work and by the systems we are fighting to reform.
We know that when we took these much-needed moments to rest and recharge, we also created space for reflection, innovation,and creativity. We reminded ourselves of our hopes and aspirations. We drew strength from knowing we are part of a wider movement for change. We returned on the 12 July with fresh energy and ideas, ready to continue our vital work. And the feedback from our staff about taking a week of Radical Rest has been overwhelmingly positive - so we plan to make this an annual event at AdvocAid.
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